CQ TODAY MIDDAY UPDATE
May 20, 2009 – 2:03 p.m.
Senate Panel Moves To Counter Federal Workforce Strains
A Senate committee moved Wednesday to address a looming shortfall in the federal workforce by making it easier for retirees to return to work part time and by prodding agencies to allow more telework.
Sen. Susan Collins , R-Maine, sponsor of a measure encouraging part-time employment of federal retirees, said their skills are needed at a time when the government is facing a wave of retirements as the baby boom ages.
“The Office of Personnel Management calculates that 60 percent of the current federal workforce, whose civilian component approaches three million people, will be eligible to retire during the coming 10 years,” she said when she introduced her bill.
Many retirees would like to return to work on short-term projects, she said, but they are discouraged by current law, which requires that their salaries be reduced by the amount of their pensions. The bill approved Wednesday by the Senate Homeland and Governmental Affairs Committee would remove that disincentive.
A second bill approved by the panel seeks to encourage more federal agencies to allow their employees to telecommute.
Sen. Daniel K. Akaka , D-Hawaii, the bill’s sponsor, said when he introduced it, “Expanding telework options helps the federal government attract and retain talented employees. With a large portion of the federal workforce eligible for retirement in the coming years, it is essential for agencies to develop management tools to enhance recruitment and retention. This bill would provide Federal agencies with an important tool to remain competitive in the modern workplace and would offer a flexible option for human capital management.”
Comments
This is nice and while worthwhile, I think that what the Senators, and the administration should be putting their time and money towards is making it easier for Federal agencies to hire new sometimes young sometimes experienced talented people. Hiring at a Federal agency takes months and months -- by the time we are ready to make decisions most good candidates have moved into the private sector. Please fix the hiring process!
I agree with a fed. Why not focus on mentoring and shadowing assignments, lessons learned, and other "passing of the torch" activities before the wave of retirements hits so we can be ready. It's much cheaper to hire young, fresh, energetic minds at entry lever rather than find incentives to entice retirees back.
I find stories like these odd, because the federal government on the one hand complains about a looming worker shortfall, yet when you look at the actual federal government openings, nearly 60 percent are reserved for current/former federal civil servants. When I crunched the number in mid-January, only about 42 percent of federal jobs were open to any applicant. For the core management classes of GS 11 - 14, it was an even smaller population. And that figures includes jobs for which you must be a member of the National Guard to qualify for the job. So the pool of open jobs is even less. I'm a former Congressional Aide (5 years) and staffer to a presidential advisory commission (2 years), yet I'm blocked from applying for many great jobs because of restrictive hiring policies. If the federal government had just downsized dramatically, I could understand why you'd hold jobs open for current/former employees, but when the federal government is the only employer on the globe hiring - why the restrictions? When I call to ask why a job is closed to non-GS applicants, I'm simply told "That's a decision that's left to the hiring manager." There obviously doesn't have to be an justification...just a great way, it seems, to wire jobs for the friends of the hiring manager.
POST A COMMENT
Oops! The following errors must be addressed: